Search

Two performance parameters are particularly important for the assessment of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems, i.e., their damage detection capabilities and risk of false positive indications due to varying environmental and operational conditions (EOCs). A reduced ratio of false-positive indications can be of significant importance for particular applications, for example, in aerospace, where the costs of unplanned maintenance procedures can be very high. In such cases, the reduction of the false calls ratio can be critical for the possibility of the practical application of the system, apart from damage detection efficiency and system costs. Among various sensor technologies, PZT networks are proven to be one of the most universal approaches to SHM, and they were successfully applied in different scenarios. Moreover, many EOCs which may have an impact on the risk of false positive indications have been identified. Over the years, different approaches to the influence of EOCs compensation have been proposed. Compensation methods can be tailored to the particular way in which a given measurement condition, for example, ambient temperature, alters signals acquired by the PZT network or can be formulated to be also applied in the more general case. In the paper, a method for enhancement of damage detection efficiency under influence of EOCs of general nature is proposed. The particular measurement condition affecting signals acquired by PZT sensors neither needs to be measured, which could be hard in some cases, but also nor even have to be identified. The efficiency of the proposed compensation algorithms is verified based on the example of experimental results obtained under varying temperatures.

In the last few decades, there has been a significant increase in interest in developing, constructing, and using structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. The classic monitoring system should, by definition, have, in addition to the diagnostic module, a module responsible for monitoring loads. These loads can be measured with piezoelectric force sensors or indirectly with strain gauges such as resistance strain gauges or FBG sensors. However, this is not always feasible due to how the force is applied or because sensors cannot be mounted. Therefore, methods for identifying excitation forces based on response measurements are often used. This approach is usually cheaper and easier to implement from the measurement side. However, in this approach, it is necessary to use a network of response sensors, whose installation and wiring can cause technological difficulties and modify the results for slender constructions. Moreover, many load identification methods require the use of multiple sensors to identify a single force history. Increasing the number of sensors recording responses improves the numerical conditioning of the method. The proposed article presents the use of contactless measurements carried out with the help of a high-speed camera to identify the forces exiting the object.

Condition monitoring is an indispensable element related to the operation of rotating machinery. In this article, the monitoring system for the parallel gearbox was proposed. The novelty detection approach is used to develop the condition assessment support system, which requires data collection for a healthy structure. The measured signals were processed to extract quantitative indicators sensitive to the type of damage occurring in this type of structure. The indicator’s values were used for the development of four different novelty detection algorithms. Presented novelty detection models operate on three principles: feature space distance, probability distribution, and input reconstruction. One of the distance-based models is adaptive, adjusting to new data flowing in the form of a stream. The authors test the developed algorithms on experimental and simulation data with a similar distribution, using the training set consisting mainly of samples generated by the simulator. Presented in the article results demonstrate the effectiveness of the trained models on both data sets.